Children Have Nightmares
by Thorn In Your Side
Summary: And what do you suppose high and untouchable Hitsugaya Toshiro was?


**Children Have Nightmares**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.**

**A/N: Set just after Decide 8, End of the Chrysalis Stage.**

**x.x.x.x.x.x.x**

He reached her waist, and he reached past her ability to defeat. She'd be damned if she let him reach a point past her ability to comfort.

The dead and dying of Gotei 13, the jewels of Soul Society lay abandoned and lackluster on Karakura town's false, demolished streets. Some were draped over rooftops. Some were dusted in rubble. And one young woman was impaled on a sword of hatred never meant for her. The poor thing. All she had wanted was a chance to redeem herself, or maybe it was a chance to demand explanations of that traitorous fuck—Rangiku hadn't asked and now it was too late. Now Momo was _**gone. **_

"I was waiting for him to fight back," Shunsui was saying sadly as Lisa touched him, "But to launch a counterattack of this magnitude…!"

How would Hitsugaya Toshiro survive this?

Rangiku's stomach swelled with sick guilt. It was _**Momo **_who had died, her dear if not dearest friend. (Gin had left her. She had yet to leave him.) Momo was dead, but all Rangiku cared about was finding her captain. Momo was beyond her help. Toshiro was not.

The snowy hair sprung unexpectedly into view, mockingly appropriate of the aged expression on the boy's savaged face. Rangiku's heart fell out from the bottom of her chest: he looked so _**scared**_. It wasn't an emotion she was used to. Not on him. On anyone else—on anyone else! But not her captain. Toshiro was fearless, dauntless, ruthless…

He was a child.

The force of that truth hit her like a well deserved hook to the jaw. She stumbled forward, bloody and probably beyond help herself but dying to reach him. Hah, how literal. Her hands stretched forth and he returned the hapless gesture; their fingers intertwined and they knelt facing each other. Her eyes were on him. He was looking at his sword. Rangiku _**saw **_the scream bulging in his throat; she _**saw **_it filling his eyes before it burst out of his mouth and into her breasts where she'd shoved his face at the last moment.

"N-nightmare…it's a nightmare…M-Matsumoto wake me up! T-tell me I have paperwork to do," he gasped, "Tell me a-anything just…please…Matsumoto…!"

What kind of useless woman was she? Her captain was making a request of her. How could she refuse? She tried to feel wrenching pain at her own cruelty but all that came for now was numbed responsibility.

She _**knew **_what the right thing to do was.

She could _**not **_let him hide away from this.

_Not even for a minute? _The voice in her mind was no doubt an echo of her fading consciousness. Well she was so very weak; she had only the one lung and that was being overworked by both her crushing fatigue and Toshiro's burrowing nose, his eyelashes wet and heavy against her skin and his breath uneven in her cleavage. Both of them needed air.

_You can't help him hide for a minute?_ the voice disapproved. Well so did she. This guy jackknifed between her legs as much as he could curl and snuffling like a hog wasn't any beautiful boy to hold and protect. He was a _**captain**_ and he had adult colleagues who regardless of his age would expect him to behave as an adult. All the others were solemn and studying the carnage and asking around for details—they'd all been so haphazardly incapacitated no one was out for the whole thing and no one had witnessed the whole thing. Except for Kurosaki Ichigo but why bring him up—he was a boy too—like the one in her lap—like Toshiro, but Ichigo and _**none **_of the others had lost a companion. None of them had killed a best friend or maybe more with their own hands.

(Shuuhei's agony had gone unnoticed by Rangiku. But then he had done it willingly. Was that supposed to make it better or worse?)

Toshiro's hands balled up in her robes.

"Hitsugaya…"

It would have felt so deeply, unforgivably wrong to call him 'captain' with him in a state of such shocking vulnerability. No. Best to separate the boy from the boss. Best to let the boy grieve. Just…just for a bit. Rangiku would pretend it was she herself who needed the break. For him she could do that much. She dipped her lips into the crown of his blood-splattered hair. Soft white strands stuck to her chin with crimson adhesive and he gave a great shudder before lying still in her arms. And Rangiku's arms were _**all over **_him. They were at his feet trying to gather him up into her body, they were at his hands rubbing warmth into the icy flesh. They caressed his hips and wound round and round his chest like a constrictor boa come to finish him off. As if Tia Halibel couldn't have handled it. As if Aizen Sousuke couldn't have done it.

Time crept.

A painful alternation of sobbing into her neck and fighting to get free of her grip had worn him down to a wreckage of a soul, napping fitfully. Momo's spirit body had long since disintegrated. Hyourinmaru lay a few feet away like a lover spurned—like a dog kicked aside—and Rangiku wasn't sure that Toshiro was trying to get to the zanpakutou when he was trying to get her to leave him. Perhaps he just needed to expend the energy that would have otherwise trod memory lane into a past where Momo would forever wake him with a degrading _Shiro-chan~ _instead of the dying rasp and the extra word _why _that cut him more completely than he'd cut her.

Rangiku didn't know. She just held on tight.

Kira Izuru had come around several times with various members of Retsu's squads, feebly attempting to finish healing Rangiku. But she was a vice-captain too and had been that strong for a damn sight longer than he. When her reiatsu flared warningly they beat a game retreat. She rather thought Izuru, if he really wanted, could shove through and come for her anyway but refrained from doing so because he hadn't the heart.

One look at Toshiro's crumpled form and no one would have the heart to disrupt them.

He was a pariah once again. This time Rangiku was sure he was glad of it. Insofar that he could be glad of anything right now.

_Momo's dead._

Fading consciousness shut the fuck up and fade away.

_Momo's dead, Rangiku. He hasn't even accepted it yet and he's like this. The only part of it he comprehends is stabbing her and he's hardly salvageable. What about when he regains his senses?_

Then he would be Hitsugaya-taichou, hardass of the Gotei 13. The most accomplished genius since Ichimaru Gin himself.

_He will die of heartbreak._

No.

_There will be nothing for you to do but watch._

Oh god no.

_She was irreplaceable. And he isn't you to have something that precious taken away and live to cry about it. _

Her iron grip tightened and he hiccoughed. Again. Again. It turned into a gasp, a groan—and she knew the scream was coming again because she'd been stupid enough to let him fall asleep where he could relive the nightmare with surround sound and grotesque visual effects…she shook him awake. The scream died a stillborn death. And she kissed him hard on the lips.

Well yes he was a child but what more could she do to show him how solidly, completely she was there? It was chaste and it was quick and Rangiku pulled his captain's haori warmer around him.

Right, like that would make up for the ice eating his personality.

"Matsumoto-san. That is enough."

"Unohana-taichou…!"

Her reiatsu was like a withering moth next to the winged eagle pressure of the 4th Division captain's. But that couldn't be right. Unohana-taichou's presence was always filled with the softest spiritual pressure. So Rangiku had gotten a lot weaker than she'd accounted for. It was to the extent that Retsu's reiatsu, folded neatly into least visibility, could raise welts on her bare arms so firmly clamped to Toshiro's shoulders.

"Matsumoto-san, if you must console Hitsugaya-taichou then you must remain alive for more than a few minutes. Please allow me to attend to you."

If that meant letting Toshiro go like _**hell **_Rangiku would. If she disengaged her claws he would…he would…there was no telling what he would do. There was no chance of leaving him be.

"Matsumoto-san, we have been very patient…" Retsu couldn't smile or sparkle in the middle of this ice field of misery. Her voice was in that danger zone but Rangiku found the woman's intimidation forlorn without the contradictory beaming face. Unohana Retsu looked a bit tired.

The child in her arms grew up quickly. "Matsumoto…I'll stay right here. Get healed."

"Hitsugaya-taichou…" words, words, words. There were mounds of them from which she could take her bloody pick and tie him to her tight as physical contact but he met her eyes and that was more than enough. He shifted over her legs so that she could lie down, and knelt at her head. A hand on her hair.

Reversal. For what purpose? It was _**he **_who had needed her. Or was it forever destined to be the other way around? Were all the men in her life more capable of leaving her than she was of leaving them?

Unohana Retsu made a few deft movements under her robes and nodded to Kotetsu Isane before pottering off to the next casualty. Her lieutenant leapt in to bind Rangiku's wound with kido and threw in a harassed grimace before dashing off in pursuit of the older woman.

"Matsumoto…" Toshiro whispered. For her ears only. "Hold me again." His voice shook. He didn't want even her to hear that.

As soon as possible—far too soon—Yamamoto Genryuusai would call the captains to order and suffer the last-minute flurry of healing before heading to Soul Society. To help Kurosaki Isshin and Ichigo if they were alive; to throw away their last energies against Sousuke if they weren't. For now no one paid attention worth mentioning to the captain and lieutenant of Division Ten as they stuck tightly together.

It didn't matter.

They were just another two souls awash in the wake of Aizen Sousuke's powerful path.

**x.x.x.x.x.x.x**

**I re-read that chapter—Toshiro's flashback. How somber and motherly Rangiku seemed. (Even with the whole hit-him-with-boobs thing. That inspired me to throw the kiss in there to see if I could get away with it.)**


End file.
